There’s a Map for ThatInnovations in modern cartography o;er new tools forreal estate professionals to connect with current and future clients.

Mapping technology has come a long
way since the days Mapquest and Garmin
ruled the lot. A host of open-data and
proprietary tools o;ers real estate pros—
both residential and commercial—new
ways to share data about properties,
local economic trends, and neighborhood
amenities. Free and low-cost products,
including Leaflet, Google’s My Maps,
CARTO Builder, and BatchGeo, can help
you create custom maps of favorite
neighborhood haunts, walking tours, or
even comparable listings. The results will
surely get the attention of prospective
clients, both online and o;ine.

You don’t have to be a master coder tomake the tools your own, says Christo-pher Coté, R&D lead lab engineer for theNational Association of REALTORS®’Center for REALTOR® Technology. Hesays tech-savvy agents may be able tocreate their own customized maps, orthey can rely on their regular web de-signer, who doesn’t have to be a mappingspecialist.

“An entry-level web developer cancreate stylized map views that match thelook of your brand, or if you’re [focusedon] an individual property, match thestyle of the home,” Coté says. “You canadjust the controls or even customizebuttons or overlays so that the map tiesinto your information.”Real estate professionals can take ad-vantage of data that more and more mu-nicipalities are making publicly availableabout city services. For example, Chi-cago’s open data portal o;ers location-specific information about new businesslicenses, bike-share rentals, and averageelectricity use, among more than 200other sets that developers can incorpo-rate in applications. “You can pull in a lotof extra data around the neighborhood,”Coté says. “All that data is geotagged soyou can map it to [a specific] area.”

Going Pro

When hiring mapping professionals,
Coté suggests looking for a team that
understands both data and design. “You
need a mix of data scientist, designer, and
geographer,” he says.

One such company is atlas3D, where
programmers use the open-source
OpenStreetMap system as a base upon
which they stack professionally designed
renderings of buildings, videos, interactive 3-D photography, and landscaping,
to help tell the story of a place. They can
bring in information about comps from
an MLS and update data in real time. The
maps they build can also easily be embedded on a brokerage’s website, which
helps bring consumers back to your site.

“The interactive media draws people
in and allows them to get a feel for the
space,” says Madeline Hennessy, director
of sales at concept3D Inc., the parent
company of atlas3D. She notes that the